Merida Faculty - January 2009: Cornelius Eady
Photo: Chip Cooper
Cornelius Eady was born in 1954 in Rochester, New York.
Cornelius Eady is the author of six books of poetry:
Brutal Imagination, Problems, Putnam/Marian Wood (2001)
The Autobiography of a Jukebox, Carnegie-Mellon University Press (1997)
You Don’t Miss Your Water, Henry Holt and Co. (1995)
The Gathering of My Name, Carnegie Mellon Univiversity Press (1991), nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry
Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, Ommation Press (1986), winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets
Kartunes, Warthog Press (1980)
as well as many audio recordings
The Oxford Anthology of African American Poetry, Oxford University Press (2006), ed. Arnold Rampersad
The Beacon Best of 2001: Great Writing by Women and Men of All Colors and Cultures, Beacon Press (2001), ed. Junot Diaz
The Vintage Book of African American Poetry: 200 Years of Vision, Struggle, Power, Beauty and Triumph from 50 Outstanding
Poets, Vintage (2000), eds. Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton
The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, [Published for: Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and Middlebury
College Press by University of New England Press (1999), eds. Michael Collier and Stanley Plumly
The Second Set: The Jazz Poetry Anthology, Indiana University Press (1996), eds. Sascha Feinstein and Yusef Komunyakaa
In Search of Color Everywhere, Stewart, Tabori and Chang; New Edition (1996), ed. E. Ethelbert Miller
Swing Low: Black Men Writing, Crown Publishers (1995) ed. Rebecca Carroll
Every Shut Eye Ain’t Asleep: An Anthology of Poetry by African Americans since 1945, Back Bay Books (Little Brown, 1994)
eds. Michael Harper, Anthony Walton
Ploughshares
American Scholar
With poet Toi Derricote, Cornelius is co-founder and Vice President of Cave Canem, a summer workshop/retreat for African American poets. He is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Literature (1985), a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry (1993), a Lila Wallace- Readers Digest Traveling Scholarship to Tougaloo College in Mississippi (1992-1993), a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to Bellagio, Italy (1993), and The Prairie Schooner Strousse Award (1994). In June 1997, an adaptation of You Don't Miss Your Water was performed at the Vineyard Theatre, in New York City. In April 1999, Running Man, a music-theatre piece co-written with jazz musican Diedre Murray was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and awarded a 1999 Obie for best musical score and lead actor in a musical.
Cornelius has taught poetry at SUNY Stony Brook, where he directed its Poetry Center, City College, Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, The Writer’s Voice, The 92nd St Y, The College of William and Mary, and Sweet Briar College. In January 2002, a production of Brutal Imagination (with a score by Diedre Murray) opened at the Vineyard Theatre, where and won the 2002 Oppenheimer award for the best first play by an American Playwright.
Mr. Eady is currently an Associate Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
“What is beautiful about Eady’s work is the way in which the poems themselves become envelopes, containers for the elegant missives of his characters’ voices—not angry in their tone, but piercing, quiet, intelligent—reflections of Cornelius Eady’s wonderfully restless spirit.” — Ploughshares
“Cornelius Eady's poems are joyous, incantatory, experiential. [His] work is a glossary of earthly objects and human events, and his linguistic responses provide pleasure even when they are provoked by injustice, or by pain, or by loss.” — Dia Art Foundation
Audio webscast of Cornelius Eady
More about Cornelius here